Nice Team Effort Helps the Mineral Point Boys Basketball Team Defeat Platteville

By John Dalton

In an up-tempo, fast-paced game Tuesday night at Platteville, the Mineral Point Pointers were able to hold off the Platteville Hillmen 78-68.  

The first half was a see-saw battle game that saw many lead changes early.  Mineral Point would go on a 10-2 run to take a 17-10 lead at the 12:00 minute mark of the 1st quarter.  But back-to-back 3-pointers by Platteville’s Myron Reuter and Davyn Edge cut that lead to 17-16.  

Not to be outdone, Pointer Jaxson Wendhausen then buried two, 3-point shots of his own to go back up 23-16.  But again, the Hillmen pressured the Pointers defensively and ultimately took the lead 24-23 from Zach McClain’s bucket at the 5:30 mark in the first half.

But Mineral Point would score the next 7 points and never relinquish the lead for the rest of the contest.  

Led by Landon Thousand, who had a team high 19 points, the Pointers would take a 42-33 lead into halftime.  

“A lot of guys stepped up in big ways tonight against a quality opponent in Platteville.  I thought we shared the ball well offensively and I thought we were engaged defensively, said Mineral Point Head Coach Dan Burreson.  “We had big production out of Landon and Eli but I thought Brady Radke was effective in the post tonight and great bench contributions from Luke Filardo and Jaxson Wendhausen came in and hit a couple shots.  We had a lot of guys that contributed tonight,” Burreson went on to say about his total team performance.

Platteville came out in the second half and started to claw back into the contest by applying full court pressure off of made baskets but could never quite regain the lead again.  Mineral Point eventually effectively beat the press and was able to get many baskets, and ultimately applying its own defensive pressure creating turnovers and points off those turnovers.  

“I like the depth of this team.  I like how well they played together tonight, but there is a lot of work yet to do.  But this is who we are right now.  We’re quick and with Eli’s versatility we’re able to put four guards around him or put 2 or 3 bigs out there and shake things up” Burreson said of his ball club.  

Next up is New Glarus this Friday for the Pointers in a home game scheduled to start at 7:30 p.m.  “They got us pretty good last year and they’re always pretty tough.  They have a similar style as us so it should be interesting,” said Burreson on this Friday’s contest.  

BOX SCORE

Mineral Point    42 – 36 – 78

Platteville          33 -  32 - 68

Mineral Point (fg-ft-tp); Landon Thousand 7-4-19, Eli Lindsey 7-0-16, Jayson Wendhausen 5-0-13, Brady Radke 6-1-13, Alex Ross 3-1-7, Luke Filardo 2-0-4, Bryce Varnstad 1-2-4, Drew Aschilman 1-0-2.

3-pointers – Wendhausen 3, Lindsey 2, Thousand 1.

Platteville (fg-ft-tp); Simon Boebel 8-0-19, Davyn Edge 7-2-18, Lucas Ludlum 6-4-16, Myron Reuter 4-0-11, Zach McCain 2-0-4.

3-pointers – Boebel 3, Reuter 3, Edge 2.